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Fascinating how far technology use and philosophy has diverged between generations. I'm old school and local first. I don't own a smart phone and I host my own

Fascinating how far technology use and philosophy has diverged between generations. I'm old school and local first. I don't own a smart phone and I host my own music, video and I read real books and ebooks I download and read from an off line eReader. Then I compare with the modern man who streams his music, video, buys audio books as a service, uses only web browser applications, and then bitterly complains when the internet goes down, or when the prices of his apps go up, or when his favourite music or movie disappears from the service provider and so on and so on. So not only a complete loss of control and computing autonomy, but also a financial drain as well when counting the cost of all the apps and services. Mean while, I'll happily chug along, local first, and if the internet doesn't work, at most my web browsing and email suffers, but since I do have my reference libraries, documentation and interpreters available locally, I can still get work done until the internet comes back up.

staticelf 2y ago
Yeah I kind of agree with what you're saying, the main issue for me is that I work in web dev and very few people are like you are and would pay for local first software. I have a hard time even convincing people I know hate cloud spyware shit to use local first alternatives that require just a little more setup. I would love to make all my work local first but when the users are requesting other things I have to oblige. The feature list is long and the time is short. I simply can't spend a lot of time on making a sucky git alternative for when conflicts happen. When doing work on my spare time projects I want to make as much as possible in the little time that I do have, so local first is pretty much on the bottom of the list. Personally, I tried to build a music library but it's very hard today since you can't get music legally in a good cheap way. Illegally by torrenting is also hard because no one torrents music anymore. I do keep a library of movies but I rarely visit it and stream new movies with torrent software. Basically everything else, like work, is mostly online based today so there is not really much to do locally anymore except photo editing and watching movies for me. Of course, I do still develop on my machine but as soon as I get stuck on something I need the internet to look up some reference or whatever and if I don't have the internet I can't get emails or chat messages from colleagues or push my code anyway so then I can only work for a short while. I completely hate most cloud software and prefer local first but my issue is that no one except nerds on hackernews really cares about it and it is too much work for little gain. I actually are in a process to rewrite a side project that I hope to one day be a business from a local-first react project to a phoenix liveview. Why? Because I think the realtime aspects of the project will bring in more customers and it's far easier to maintain the state. So again, less work and more features I will actually get paid for. If I ever make it to a stable business, I will probably make a small portion of the app work offline because I know some customers will like it when they use it under ground.
braden-lk 2y ago
Convenience is king. As life piles up (errands, parenting, everything), cognitive capacity goes down and the more the user wants a "push button do everything" solution. They'll trade autonomy for ultra-convenience + a dropped internet connection now and then. I'm somewhere in the middle, but I see why people do either.
- staticelf 2y ago
  People just don't care (anymore) unless it affects them personally. I have no idea if it used to be like that or if is a function of modern society where you get accustomed to it due to a lifestyle that is good for the majority of the time. Some people like me cares too much about too much and thinks a lot about stuff like this. I wish more people would care about more things but it just ain't so.

staticelf 2y ago

Yeah I kind of agree with what you're saying, the main issue for me is that I work in web dev and very few people are like you are and would pay for local first software. I have a hard time even convincing people I know hate cloud spyware shit to use local first alternatives that require just a little more setup. I would love to make all my work local first but when the users are requesting other things I have to oblige. The feature list is long and the time is short. I simply can't spend a lot of time on making a sucky git alternative for when conflicts happen. When doing work on my spare time projects I want to make as much as possible in the little time that I do have, so local first is pretty much on the bottom of the list. Personally, I tried to build a music library but it's very hard today since you can't get music legally in a good cheap way. Illegally by torrenting is also hard because no one torrents music anymore. I do keep a library of movies but I rarely visit it and stream new movies with torrent software. Basically everything else, like work, is mostly online based today so there is not really much to do locally anymore except photo editing and watching movies for me. Of course, I do still develop on my machine but as soon as I get stuck on something I need the internet to look up some reference or whatever and if I don't have the internet I can't get emails or chat messages from colleagues or push my code anyway so then I can only work for a short while. I completely hate most cloud software and prefer local first but my issue is that no one except nerds on hackernews really cares about it and it is too much work for little gain. I actually are in a process to rewrite a side project that I hope to one day be a business from a local-first react project to a phoenix liveview. Why? Because I think the realtime aspects of the project will bring in more customers and it's far easier to maintain the state. So again, less work and more features I will actually get paid for. If I ever make it to a stable business, I will probably make a small portion of the app work offline because I know some customers will like it when they use it under ground.

braden-lk 2y ago

Convenience is king. As life piles up (errands, parenting, everything), cognitive capacity goes down and the more the user wants a "push button do everything" solution. They'll trade autonomy for ultra-convenience + a dropped internet connection now and then. I'm somewhere in the middle, but I see why people do either.

staticelf 2y ago
People just don't care (anymore) unless it affects them personally. I have no idea if it used to be like that or if is a function of modern society where you get accustomed to it due to a lifestyle that is good for the majority of the time. Some people like me cares too much about too much and thinks a lot about stuff like this. I wish more people would care about more things but it just ain't so.